An extraordinary row has broken out between Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin over the Irish Cathoic Church's child sex abuse scandal.

Drennan has demanded that Martin drop his name from the list of bishops who should resign. He said that his integrity had been put under a cloud when the archbishop called for all bishops named in the report to resign, and he wanted this corrected.

"It certainly would be helpful," he told RTE radio "The people of Galway are saying my integrity is being brought into question by that statement. I can’t clear myself in this case.

“I don’t know whether Archbishop Martin intended that or not but it has put a question mark over my integrity.”

Drennan said he had answered a letter from Martin on the issue.

“Now that I have responded to him and given him the evidence he needs. He might want to reflect on that and what response he might want to make to it.”

Drennan served as auxiliary bishop of Dublin from 1997 to 2005 and was named in the Murphy Report on child sex abuse cover-ups. He said he had nothing to answer for. “As far as I know I handled cases as best I could.

“I feel we have been through a spiral of revenge. I understand that people are angry... but taking the route of revenge is not going to bring any closure.

“There’s a lot of anger out there even among our very best people, and that anger has to be channelled into positive directions,” he said.

He said that the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray, was correct in resigning as “he was no longer a source of healing in the diocese, no longer a source of unity. And in that situation any of us would resign.”